Back to the Bakemono

The vampire child Shinobu was once known by the delightfully decadent name Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade and audiences were finally able to see her in action this year in the latter two films of the three part Kizumonogatari (傷物語). Each film is just over an hour long, released separately in theatres in Japan over the course of 2016, the final film being released at the beginning of this year. Serving as prequels to Bakemonogatari, these films are much more about sex and violence than the show--some really impressive violence, mind you, and some okay sexual titillation.

Kizumonogatari finally shows us the events referred to so frequently in the first season of Bakemonogatari, which always felt like it was picking up on a story already in progress. We finally get to find out how Araragi (Hiroshi Kamiya) met Kiss-Shot (Maaya Sakamoto) as well as his know-it-all classmate, Hanekawa (Yui Horie)--though her amusing catch phrase is "I don't know everything, I only know what I know." And we get to see the events that led to Araragi becoming a sort of half vampire.

I honestly found the first film disappointing, especially because we only get to see Kiss-Shot briefly before she's turned into a child. One of the more frustrating trends in anime over the past decade has been more and more focus on sexualised children which, putting aside any moral issues, I simply don't find very attractive or exciting. The child vampire Shinobu was part of a really nice concept in the first Bakemonogatari series--a mysterious, mute child demon who existed in Araragi's shadow, there was something really intriguing in her as an artistic expression of the psychology in the relationship between two people or even just as a portrait of Araragi's mind by itself. In subsequent seasons, she became more an object of loli fan service, and with several other child characters introduced the show moved disappointingly in this direction in a lot of ways. The first season introduced one of the best, and best designed, female romantic leads in an anime of the 21st century, Senjogahara, but ever since then she's been sidelined increasingly in favour of loli characters.

To anyone who hasn't seen it, by the way, the first season of Bakemonogatari is absolutely amazing, and the exceptional quality of its writing has often to do with a subversion of the growing, depressing trend in anime to depict beautiful women as docile house pets or transparent tsundere. For whatever reason, after the first season the show has gradually moved away from this.

It's still not as bad as some and Kizumonogatari improves a great deal in its second portion, though Hanekawa isn't as good as Senjogahara at calling Araragi on his bullshit. There's a lot of business involving her panties which is pretty hot but seems implausible considering their very platonic relationship in the first season. But there's a well executed 2001: A Space Odyssey gag the first time Hanekawa shows Araragi her panties.

And thankfully Kiss-Shot doesn't spend much time as a kid in the second portion. Araragi having to deal with his attraction to her while also facing the reality that she's a vampire is nicely done but hardly new territory--maybe it's for that reason production company Shaft chose to begin adapting the light novels with the introduction of Senjougahara.

Kizumonogatari has a very different visual style to the series, relying on a more uniform amber colour palette that looks okay sometimes and giving the girls preposterously large breasts which are more often ridiculous than hot. But people obsessed with equal time fan service might be pleased to know there's a lot of attention paid to male physique, too.

The more limited colour palette doesn't bother me as much as the film's indulgence in the currently popular "blush and shine" effect which my eyes tend to read as big pus filled blisters or pimples.

But where Kizumonogatari really shines is in the action sequences. The middle portion is the standout as Araragi is forced to face three vampire hunters in order to retrieve the limbs that have been stolen from Kiss-Shot. The series has often used Araragi's ability to regrow body parts for effective comedy and horror, sometimes both at the same time, but the action sequences in this film take it to a new level.

It's not just in the animation. The composition and sequence of shots smoothly tell kinetic stories, as in Araragi's first bout with a hunter named Dramaturgy who's a lot stronger than the high school lad bargained for. Shots of Araragi desperately trying to escape the big man, running through the high school, are creatively constructed and it's always easy to follow the action and get an idea of the environment and the characters' distance from each other.

The final film has a gratuitous, imaginary makeout scene with Hanekawa obviously there for fan service. It's a bit disappointing due to another current trend in anime, doll anatomy, where topless women are shone without nipples but a lot of the stuff between Araragi and the adult Kiss-Shot is nice to watch.

Crystals versus the Snake Demon

The past couple weeks, I've been rewatching Kinda and Snakedance, the two Doctor Who serials written by Christopher Bailey about the snake demon, Mara. Apparently based on a demon in Buddhism of the same name, the creature is a figure in two different cultural imaginations in these two serials which are even better than I remember.

This is despite the presence of Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) in Kinda. I still feel like the dialogue between Adric and the Doctor (Peter Davison) about magic tricks must have been swapped by the actors--it doesn't make sense that the Doctor would have forgotten the magic tricks he performed in his third incarnation and it really doesn't make sense for Adric to get one over on the Doctor. Fortunately he's not too obtrusive.

Magic and trickery feature again in Snakedance in a different context--the Doctor, Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), and Tegan (Janet Fielding) show up in the middle of some kind of carnival in commemoration of a defeat of the Mara hundreds of years earlier. There's a fortune teller with a crystal ball and a fun house mirror maze--both eventually giving visions of the Mara in the form of some kind of animal skull.

When Tegan finds herself facing the Mara in the fun house, the demon having laid dormant in her since Kinda, she's puzzled why mirrors don't banish the creature as they did in the first serial's conclusion. It makes sense, though, as in that case the Mara could only reflect on itself being surrounded by mirrors, but naturally it thrives on distorting the self-reflection of others. That seems clear in Tegan's first dream sequence in Kinda where the Mara divides her personality into two.

Neither is a "false Tegan" and, indeed, they both start to cooperate, trying to figure out how to escape. By thwarting them, the Mara disrupts the basic act or state of self-awareness.

Kinda is also reminiscent of Heart of Darkness with its wouldbe colonists, who come off as very Victorian, being driven mad just by coming into contact with a "primitive" people who live and communicate in ways totally alien and yet deeply familiar. The snake, Mara, being the only one among the natives who can talk brings to mind the snake's extraordinary ability to speak in Genesis (something Milton has Eve remark upon at length in Paradise Lost). The Kinda, the native people, seem innocent in their muteness, but this makes them sinister to the colonists who, like so many colonists who lost their minds in other such stories, fill the void in their understanding with a distorted reflection of self.

Bailey's two television stories show two cultures interpreting the same demon. Snakedance features a civilisation that seems to be a blend of ancient Rome and Renaissance Europe where the Mara is easily able to take control. Faith in their ability to reason has blinded the rulers and the museum curator to the danger the Mara represents--they've come to believe the demon's only a myth. The museum curator and the proprietor of the fun house quickly become the Mara's servants because both are committed to something they don't believe is real.

Poor Tegan, though she's certainly fashion forward in that romper in Snakedance. I miss Nyssa's velvety dress from Keeper of Traken, though I hated the pants version of it. But her weird blue stripey blouse is breezier and makes her seem less like a kid. Peter Davison is good as always, particularly in the climax of Snakedance.

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Getting a Leg Up on Dark Matter

Last night brought the best episode of The Orville yet and not just because Charlize Theron was in it. Director Jonathan Frakes brought his A game, particularly when it came to action sequences, the episode's plot was more inventive than I thought it would be, and it was the funniest episode I've seen so far.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I expected the episode to be a bit like the Firefly episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" and to some extent it was. The Captain, Ed (Seth MacFarlane), falls for a beautiful guest star who isn't what she claims to be. Pria's (Theron) true identity as a time travelling thief of historical artefacts makes her a bit like Vash from Star Trek: The Next Generation, too, something that makes me wonder if we'll be seeing her again. Theron has certainly been vocal about her fondness for MacFarlane so it would hardly be a surprise.

And she's good in the episode in a role that naturally becomes a focal point because she's subject of a debate over whether or not she can be trusted. It seems pretty clear from the beginning that she's going to betray the Orville crew at some point but Theron still makes the most of scenes where we're invited to scrutinise her, seemingly having a lot of fun.

My only real complaint about the episode is that I wish Ed had given some new insight in his pillow talk with Pria regarding his relationship with Kelly (Adrian Palicki). Saying he was too focused on work is starting to sound like a broken record.

But that accounts for only a moment. I enjoyed Kelly and Alara (Halston Sage) investigating Pria's rooms and I really loved Isaac (Mark Jackson) and Gordon (Scott Grimes) playing practical jokes on each other. Frakes uses the right understated wide shot when Isaac walks onto the bridge with the Mr. Potato Head gear.

And gods, the leg business. It's the first bit of humour that really felt like Family Guy but still didn't feel like parody. It's the right amount of sudden over-the-top when the shot begins making you think it's going to have something to do with Gordon's alarm clock and suddenly, nope, his whole leg is gone. Gordon's anger and then grudgingly admitting that it was a great joke were also perfectly played.

John Debney's score for the episode was a real standout during the effectively taut tension of the shuttlecraft escaping from the asteroid, in the dark matter storm, and in the wormhole sequence. This was some of the most effective sci-fi action I've seen in years.

The Heart's Many Angles

The danger in diagnosing the problems in any relationship is that there are inevitably so many unseen complicating factors. But in the films of Mikio Naruse, you can be sure money is a big part of it, as it is in his 1956 film A Wife's Heart (妻の心). The tale of a woman who finds herself suddenly dissatisfied in a previously contented marriage, it could be called a retread of Naruse's better, and better known, film Meshi. But a Wife's Heart is a little more complicated and a little gentler. Filled with good performances, it's another showcase for Naruse's talent for subtly sewing drama and relationships through editing and composition.

Hideko Takamine plays Kiyoko, a young woman whose husband, Shinji (Keiju Kobayashi), inherited a convenience store from his mother (Eiko Miyoshi) and the three of them now live in a nice house behind the store. Shinji inherited the property despite being the younger brother of Zenichi (Minoru Chiaki) who left home to work for a company. But when Zenichi's wife and child come to stay for a visit, Kiyoko and Shinji are surprised when Zenichi joins them and the whole family ends up staying indefinitely.

Kiyoko and Shinji are in the early stages of opening a cafe. Kiyoko goes to a good friend whose brother Kiyoko arranges to meet with, a bank manager named Kenkichi played by none other than Toshiro Mifune.

I think this is the first time I've seen Mifune in a Naruse movie and he sure sticks out. I suddenly found myself noticing how extraordinarily deep his voice his, how physically large he is, things I just take for granted when I see him in Kurosawa films. His part isn't so big in this movie but it's crucial. He happily loans Kiyoko money for the cafe and daily starts to get his lunch at the cafe where Kiyoko's learning to cook and wait tables. Meanwhile, Zenichi is suddenly asking for a loan from Shinji to start his own cafe on the other side of town and their mother is pressuring Shinji to grant it. With all the stress he's under, Shinji starts to spend more and more time drinking with a couple geisha.

It's subtly indicated that Kiyoko has a better head for finances than her husband--he has a tendency to go to her advice and both use rhetorical gymnastics to get around acknowledging the fact that the wife is telling the husband what to do with the money. Rather than anyone ever directly stating it, it's clear Kiyoko is drawn to the bigger than life, happy and confident bank manager over her insecure and malleable husband. Like Meshi, it's clear that the wife's strength is more responsible for holding up the family than the husband's.

Aside from one scene involving a suicide, the film isn't as dark as Meshi, or most of Naruse's films. A Wife's Heart is less about the feeling that an unstoppable doom is descending and more about the mysteries of paths not taken and the effects of unexpected complications. It's exciting seeing Mifune and Takamine together, I would have liked to have seen them paired in more movies.

The Hazards of Escape

There's little physical reality to most laws until they're broken. Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1969 film Medea borrows many elements from Euripides' play but becomes a broader commentary on the function of oaths and their relationship to religion and dreams. It becomes a tale on the hazards of liberation from, and the destruction of, communal dreams or conceptions of reality. It's a very nice looking film, too, with a raw, designedly disorienting aesthetic with a discordant soundtrack drawing from various cultures.

The story begins with a child Jason being instructed by his centaur foster parent, Chiron (Laurent Terzieff). He tells Jason never to forget there's nothing natural about nature and explains how ancient man naturally believed things we consider now to be obviously fantastical. This latter comment seems to indicate the centaur is talking to us more than Jason, a reflection of the centaur's otherworldly nature apparently being that he's a little postmodern. He's the only character in the film who does this, and only the once, thankfully, but it sets the table for what Pasolini's aiming at.

Later in the film, Jason as an adult (Giuseppe Gentile) has a vision of the centaur, simultaneously as the mythological creature and as the man, the juxtaposition designed to highlight the difference between myth and analysis of it. In a bit of slightly dark humour, Chiron admits that his explanations are useless but he can't stop providing them any more than the original centaur can stop prompting them.

Its through this lens the story of Medea presented in the film makes sense--and one wonders if Jason had paid better attention to Chiron the centaur's advice would've truly been so useless.

Charged with retrieving the golden fleece from a barbarous people, Jason arrives to find that Medea (Maria Callas), seemingly more of a priestess than a princess here, has already done the job for him without even having met him. We witness first the sacrifice and dismemberment of a man in a harvest ritual presided over by Medea and then she sacrifices another man in the process of escaping with the fleece to bring it to Jason. After they've escaped, there's a scene of Medea wandering the desert, in desperation because the gods are now silent, as though they're not there.

Euripides' play is focused more on Jason's breaking of his oath to Medea by deciding to wed the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth, abandoning Medea and the children he had with her. It's an exploration of how the use of such oaths is to insure insensitive people don't cause the violent emotional distress Medea experiences--her need for recompense becoming so strong that it overcomes her own sense of morality. Pasolini incorporates earlier events in the myth to focus on how both Medea and Jason are oathbreakers and the chaos, and frightening meaninglessness, that manifests after the destruction of dreams. Without the original purposes of ritual, Medea can only destroy in significance of destruction, physical destruction calculated to effect the most powerful emotional destruction.

Pasolini shows Medea's power as a priestess rests in her ability to act on dreams in ways that psychologically resonate in others to corresponding outcomes. We see two versions of her murder of the Corinthian princess (Margareth Clémenti)--first with the image of Medea's face overlaid on the footage as the poison in the gown Medea gives the princess causes the woman to burst into flames. After this, we see Medea's children give her the gown again, presumably in the "real" version of the event, and it's the sight of herself wearing the gown in a mirror that causes the princess to kill herself. By taking on the symbols of Medea's culture, perhaps the act inspires a fatal empathy in the princess and she realises for the first time that she's collaborating in Jason's oathbreaking. In any case, the results are precisely the same as in Medea's dream.

But Medea's acting for no god or community, only her own will, which in the nihilistic reality she's stranded herself in is the only possible motive. So the murder of her children isn't just a way to show Jason how she feels, it's an expression of an utterly hopeless interpretation of reality.

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Discovery in Fungus

The Discovery finally debuted on Star Trek: Discovery on Sunday, making an impressive entrance. It's also the first episode to be directed by Akiva Goldsman, director of the underrated Winter's Tale. The teleplay by 90210 and Pushing Daisies writers Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts (along with Craig Sweeny) continues to show that writing is by far the show's weak point but the visual beauty and wonderful performances, particularly from Sonequa Martin-Green, still make it well worth watching.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Guilty of the high crime of insubordination in her effort to stop the now devastating war with the Klingons using a secret Vulcan technique of shooting first, Michael (Martin-Green) has become the most hard-bitten criminal in a group of convicts being transported to a mysterious location. A cool scene involving some space fungus resolves with the timely rescue from the Discovery. Soon she's on board, facing suspicion and hatred for her crime of mutiny.

I'm starting to wonder if Vulcans only exist in Michael's mind in this universe. We haven't seen any Vulcans interact with anyone else in Starfleet and at one point Sarek appeared in Michael's mind to lend moral support. This would explain why no-one else has heard of the "Vulcan hello". It's not until the end of this third episode that Martin-Green finally meets someone who recognises her actions made sense, or at least didn't amount to murder. The very good Jason Isaacs plays Captain Lorca of the Discovery and he delivers the line that gives the episode its title, "Context is for Kings".

The idea is that only certain people have the kind of mind necessary to cut through protocol and bullshit to see what needs to be done. Either this eventually is going to come back around and bite him or the show's going to end up having a message opposite to the TNG episode "The Drumhead". In any case, it's a worthy concept not especially well executed. If I could really believe everyone would be as suspicious as they are of Michael for what she did, the story would make more sense. Context doesn't seem so much for kings but for the credibly written.

Of course, Michael does make one friend, her anachronistic roommate Tilly (Mary Wiseman). This chipper young lady seems like she wandered in from Gilmore Girls. Ten bucks says she gets killed in a pointed message about the harshness of wartime realities and how sometimes the most innocent among us fall victim while people who can make the hard choices carry on.

Otherwise, there's a lot more of the peculiarly catty dialogue, especially from the science officer who never seems to stop being ornery about having the perfectly well behaved and obviously talented Michael working for him.

The episode's best parts are on the Discovery's sister ship where things start to feel a lot like Alien. Martin-Green is allowed to shine in a way she never was able to on Walking Dead, delivering an amusing "Shit, that worked" when she tries to draw the attention of the beast. It was odd hearing her rattle off lines from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the Jeffries Tube but as a hardcore fan of those books I almost always appreciate a gratuitous reference to them, as I did here.

Bad Dreams in the Waking World

I've only been to Las Vegas once, to visit the now closed Star Trek Experience. The former attraction, in one of the most dreamlike cities in the United States, no longer drew crowds to celebrate the optimistic future depicted on Star Trek and, indeed, as Adam Savage pointed out at Comic Con this year, that dream is starting to seem not only naive but cruel.

But despite the fact that I watched the decidedly more pessimistic version of the old dream last night, Star Trek: Discovery, it's not Star Trek I thought of when I woke up to find the deadliest shooting in modern history had just occurred in Las Vegas. Images of Las Vegas had been on my screen weekly throughout the summer on Twin Peaks, one of the most prominent episodes of which, episode eleven, featured a commentary on gun violence alongside images of the Las Vegas strip.

To-day The Onion is running the same headline it usually runs when there's a mass shooting: "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens". The irony is sad and seemingly impossible to ignore and yet, as The Onion continues to run the headline, obviously it continues to be ignored again and again. Is it merely the machinery of bureaucracy and greed, is it the absurd grip of a childish dream, or is it some perfect combination of the two? How did this supposedly most pragmatic nation become the most deeply deluded?

We can say that shootings have gotten worse, much worse, in recent decades. Obviously (yes, it's obvious) stricter gun laws would alleviate part of the problem but there's a deeper problem. The old dream depends on the belief that the average American citizen has the wherewithal to own a gun responsibly--and the majority of gun owners don't go on killing sprees. Yet the typical argument from second amendment supporters, that looser gun laws allow for average citizens to save the day with their own guns, looks horribly naive in the obvious scenario of a sniper firing on a crowd. And even someone who opens fire without any cover is likely to deal too much damage before the fantasy average hero can act. It's a reality that's simply too plain for anyone not to see it so the perpetuation of this dream must rely on other factors, like the aforementioned greed and bureaucracy.

But the deeper problem is that so many people, many of them children, arrive at the decision to kill a lot of people. Even if they were prevented from killing people by stricter gun laws, there's a clear diminishing capacity for people to respect and love their fellow citizens. Adults are losing this and their kids aren't learning it.

As Shapes in the House Transform

There's not really any paranoia in 1963's Paranoiac. One of many low budget thrillers, this one produced by Hammer, designed to capitalise on the success of Psycho, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster seems to have decided the way to outdo Hitchcock's film is to add more complications. The plot holds together and due to this, along with gorgeous cinematography by Arthur Grant, capable direction by Freddie Francis, and several nice performances, it's a pretty entertaining film in spite of some absurdities and weak characterisations.

Over the course of its brief run time, the premise of the film seems to change every fifteen minutes or so. Just as you start to think you're seeing the shape of the ultimate plot twist, that plot twist is immediately revealed and a new plot begins on top of it. The first part of the film is a kind of Shirley Jackson-ish setup.

A young woman named Eleanor (Janette Scott) lives with her aunt, Harriet (Sheila Burrell), her brother, Simon (Oliver Reed), and a nurse, Francoise (Liliane Brousse), in an enormous mansion. Eleanor's beloved older brother, Tony, had died some time earlier and now the reckless, alcoholic young Simon seeks to get Eleanor out of the way so he can inherit the whole fortune. But Eleanor has started having visions of Tony (Alexander Davion) wandering about all over the place.

Just as I was starting to think the end of the movie might be about how Simon is trying to drive his sister crazy with someone impersonating her brother, or it might be a haunting, Tony casually starts talking to the whole family, much to the shock of Simon and Harriet, very early on.

So a movie that seemed to be about the point of view of a young woman doubting her senses due to impossible visions and duplicitous, scheming family, suddenly becomes about a long lost brother returning home and questions about his authenticity. It might have been a been too derivative of Shirley Jackson to have the movie from Eleanor's point of view but I would have preferred it to what happens. After this, the whole movie is told from Tony's point of view, a man whose motives are never clearly establish played by an actor giving a surpassingly bland performance. Meanwhile, Eleanor turns into a background character.

I won't reveal the subsequent twists except to say those problems only get worse. But Oliver Reed is very good, of course, his eyes wide and his gestures sudden and quick while he fiendishly plays a pipe organ or abuses the butler for not bringing him more brandy. There are a couple effective jump scares in the movie, too.

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